Kodi Community Forum - 4k video not hardware supported?

Hi!

I am using LibreELEC 9.2.6 with Kodi 18.9 (18.9.0) on a Raspbery 4B 4GB. My goal was mainly to watch drone videos in 4k on my TV. The TV's built-in video function stutters, due to the weak ethernet adapter, which for some mysterious reason only supports 100Mb/s.

Unfortunately Kodi stutters very much on playback, the framerate is about 2 frames/s, I would guess. Strangely the on screen video information (key 'o') says that the playback is hardware supported. I doubt that, because during the playback the H264-decoder is idle, while it runs with 361Mhz when playing H264-encoded videos in FHD. Also see this screenshot. The video shown there has these specs:

Format                                   : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                           : [email protected]
Format settings                          : CABAC / 1 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC                   : Yes
Format settings, Reference frames        : 1 frame
Format settings, GOP                     : M=1, N=29
Codec ID                                 : avc1
Codec ID/Info                            : Advanced Video Coding
Duration                                 : 1 min 3 s
Bit rate                                 : 99.9 Mb/s
Width                                    : 3 840 pixels
Height                                   : 2 160 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 29.970 (30000/1001) FPS
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.402
Stream size                              : 762 MiB (100%)
Encoded date                             : UTC 2020-05-21 20:05:22
Tagged date                              : UTC 2020-05-21 20:05:22
Codec configuration box                  : avcC

Is there a way to get the hardware decoder handle 4k videos?

I believe this applies to Matrix 19.x not sure about relevance to 18.9 which is what you're running: https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/issues/18444

TL;DR - 4k support for RPi4 is not yet ready in the driver. Stick to 1080p for now.

RPis only supports H264 HW decode up to HD resolution. RPi4 is too slow to software-decode 4k H264, you need H265/HEVC files to get smooth 4k playback.

BTW: 4kp30 is working fine now on RPi4 in LibreELEC master/Kodi matrix since today's nightly build.

so long,

Hias

(2021-01-19, 00:34)HiassofT Wrote: [ -> ]RPis only supports H264 HW decode up to HD resolution. RPi4 is too slow to software-decode 4k H264, you need H265/HEVC files to get smooth 4k playback.

BTW: 4kp30 is working fine now on RPi4 in LibreELEC master/Kodi matrix since today's nightly build.

so long,

Hias

Thanks for the advice. I just tried an H265 video and the playback is a little smoother but still very laggy. I will now try the latest nightly build.

(2021-01-19, 23:49)tafkab76 Wrote: [ -> ]
(2021-01-19, 00:34)HiassofT Wrote: [ -> ]RPis only supports H264 HW decode up to HD resolution. RPi4 is too slow to software-decode 4k H264, you need H265/HEVC files to get smooth 4k playback.

BTW: 4kp30 is working fine now on RPi4 in LibreELEC master/Kodi matrix since today's nightly build.

so long,

Hias
Thanks for the advice. I just tried an H265 video and the playback is a little smoother but still very laggy. I will now try the latest nightly build.

I just tested the Nightly Build and video performance with H265 is completely smooth!

Thread marked solved.

(2021-01-20, 14:53)Klojum Wrote: [ -> ]Thread marked solved.

Sorry, wasn't aware that threads here could be marked as solve. Can I do that myself next time?